AFP UK

Emergency workers evacuate residents from flooded properties in the Maribyrnong suburb of Melbourne

Thousands were warned to flee their homes in southeastern Australia on Friday to escape surging floodwaters threatening towns across three separate states. 

The flooding emergency was the worst in Victoria — Australia’s second most populous state — where on Friday morning rapidly rising waters swamped the Maribyrnong suburb of Melbourne, forcing evacuations.

The Victorian government was preparing to reopen a Covid-19 quarantine centre to shelter those whose homes were uninhabitable, state leader Daniel Andrews told ABC Radio. 

“This has been a very, very significant flood event and it’s far from over,” he said Friday morning. 

“The real challenge is waters continuing to rise and more and more houses being inundated, more and more communities being closed off.” 

The ground floor of the Anglers Tavern, a pub on the banks of the Maribyrnong River, was on Friday morning almost completely under water. 

Near-record flood levels were expected later on Friday evening in the towns of Shepparton and Murchison, north of Melbourne.

Northern parts of Tasmania — an island state south of Victoria — were on Friday also preparing for major floods. 

Mass evacuation orders were issued, while heavy rains forced the closure of some 120 roads. 

“Lives are at risk from floodwaters,” Tasmania’s state emergency service said in a statement.

In New South Wales — Australia’s most populous state — an evacuation centre was set up after intense downpours Thursday evening in Forbes, an inland town about five hours’ drive east of Sydney. 

The New South Wales emergency service said flood levels in Forbes could peak on Friday as water moved downstream. 

Australia’s east coast has been repeatedly lashed by heavy rainfall in the past two years, driven by back-to-back La Nina cycles. 

The east coast flooding disaster in March — caused by heavy storms that devastated parts of Queensland and New South Wales — claimed more than 20 lives. 

Tens of thousands of Sydney residents were ordered to evacuate in July when floods again swamped suburbs on the city’s fridge.

Distinctive stone knives believed to have been made by some of the last Neanderthals in France and northern Spain

Neanderthals and humans lived alongside each other in France and northern Spain for up to 2,900 years, modelling research suggested Thursday, giving them plenty of time to potentially learn from or even breed with each other.

While the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, did not provide evidence that humans directly interacted with Neanderthals around 42,000 years ago, previous genetic research has shown that they must have at some point.

Research by Swedish paleogeneticist Svante Paabo, who won the medicine Nobel prize last week, helped reveal that people of European descent — and almost everyone worldwide — have a small percentage of Neanderthal DNA.

Igor Djakovic, a PhD student at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the new study, said we know that humans and Neanderthals “met and integrated in Europe, but we have no idea in which specific regions this actually happened”.

Exactly when this happened has also proved elusive, though previous fossil evidence has suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals walked the Earth at the same time for thousands of years.

To find out more, the Leiden-led team looked at radiocarbon dating for 56 artefacts — 28 each for Neanderthals and humans — from 17 sites across France and northern Spain. 

The artefacts included bones as well as distinctive stone knives thought to have been made by some of the last Neanderthals in the region.

The researchers then used Bayesian modelling to narrow down the potential date ranges.

– ‘Never really went extinct’ –

Then they used optimal linear estimation, a new modelling technique they adapted from biological conservation sciences, to get the best estimate for when the region’s last Neanderthals lived.

Djakovic said the “underlying assumption” of this technique is that we are unlikely to ever discover the first or last members of an extinct species.

“For example, we’ll never find the last woolly Rhino,” he told AFP, adding that “our understanding is always broken up into fragments”.

The modelling found that Neanderthals in the region went extinct between 40,870 and 40,457 years ago, while modern humans first appeared around 42,500 years ago.

This means the two species lived alongside each other in the region for between 1,400 and 2,900 years, the study said.

During this time there are indications of a great “diffusion of ideas” by both humans and Neanderthals, Djakovic said.

The period is “associated with substantial transformations in the way that people are producing material culture,” such as tools and ornaments, he said. 

There was also a “quite severe” change in the artefacts produced by Neanderthals, which started to look much more like those made by humans, he added.

Given the changes in culture and the evidence in our own genes, the new timeline could further bolster a leading theory for the end of the Neanderthals: mating with humans. 

Breeding with the larger human population could have meant that, over time, Neanderthals were “effectively swallowed into our gene pool,” Djakovic said.

“When you combine that with what we know now — that most people living on Earth have Neanderthal DNA — you could make the argument that they never really went extinct, in a certain sense.”

Iguazu, among the world's biggest waterfalls, has nearly 10 times the usual water volume after heavy rains in southern Brazil

The famed Iguazu waterfalls on the border between Argentina and Brazil have registered 10 times their usual water volume after heavy rains, authorities said, closing one of the site’s main tourist walkways for safety reasons.

The flow through the massive waterfall system reached 14.5 million liters (3.8 million gallons) per second Wednesday night, far above the usual 1.5 million per second, said Wemerson Augusto, spokesman for Iguazu National Park.

The high water level led officials to close the “Devil’s Throat” walkway, famed for its breathtaking views of the falls, after it was partly submerged, Augusto told AFP.

He said such a large rush of water was “atypical” for October.

Walkways on the Argentine side were also closed Tuesday.

The falls have been swollen by heavy rains in Parana state in southern Brazil, where emergency officials said Wednesday 24 counties had been hit by “severe weather events” that damaged some 400 houses and forced more than 1,200 people from their homes.

The water volume was the highest registered at the falls since June 2014, when the flow hit 47 million liters per second.

Mobile phones contain valuable materials like gold, copper, silver, palladium and other recyclable components

More than five billion of the estimated 16 billion mobile phones possessed worldwide will likely be discarded or stashed away in 2022, experts said Thursday, calling for more recycling of the often hazardous materials they contain. 

Stacked flat on top of each other, that many disused phones would rise 50,000 kilometres (30,000 miles), more than a hundred times higher than the International Space Station, the WEEE research consortium found.

Despite containing valuable gold, copper, silver, palladium and other recyclable components, almost all these unwanted devices will be hoarded, dumped or incinerated, causing significant health and environmental harm. 

“Smartphones are one of the electronic products of highest concern for us,” said Pascal Leroy, Director General of the WEEE Forum, a not-for-profit association representing forty-six producer responsibility organisations. 

“If we don’t recycle the rare materials they contain, we’ll have to mine them in countries like China or Congo,” Leroy told AFP.

Defunct cell phones are just the tip of the 44.48-million-ton iceberg of global electronic waste generated annually that isn’t recycled, according to the 2020 global e-waste monitor.

Many of the five billion phones withdrawn from circulation will be hoarded rather than dumped in the trash, according to a survey in six European countries from June to September 2022. 

This happens when households and businesses forget cell phones in drawers, closets, cupboards or garages rather than bringing them in for repair or recycling.

Up to five kilos (8 pounds) of e-devices per person are currently hoarded in the average European family, the report found.

According to the new findings, 46 percent of the 8,775 households surveyed considered potential future use as the main reason for hoarding small electrical and electronic equipment. 

Another 15 percent stockpile their gadgets with the intention to sell them or giving them away, while 13 percent keep them due to “sentimental value”. 

– Societal challenge –

“People tend not to realise that all these seemingly insignificant items have a lot of value, and together at a global level represent massive volumes,” said Pascal Leroy.

“But e-waste will never be collected voluntarily because of the high cost. That is why legislation is essential.”

This month the EU parliament passed a new law requiring USB-C to be the single charger standard for all new smartphones, tablets and cameras from late 2024.

The move is expected to generate annual savings of at least 200 million euros ($195 million) and cut more than a thousand tonnes of EU electronic waste every year.

According to Kees Balde, Senior Scientific Specialist at the  United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), legislation in Europe has prompted higher e-waste collection rates in the region compared to other parts of the world. 

“At the European level, 50-55 percent of e-waste is collected or recycled,” Balde told AFP. “In low-income countries, our estimates plunge to under 5 percent and sometimes even below 1 percent.”

At the same time, thousands of tons of e-waste are shipped from wealthy nations — including members of the European Union — to developing countries every year, adding to their recycling burden. 

At the receiving end, financial means are often lacking for e-waste to be treated safely: hazardous substances such as mercury and plastic can contaminate soil, pollute water and enter the food chain, as happened near a Ghanaian e-waste dumpsite. 

Research carried out in the west African nation in 2019 by the IPEN and Basel Action Network revealed a level of chlorinated dioxins in hens’ eggs laid near the Agbogbloshie dumpsite, near central Accra, 220 times higher than levels permitted in Europe. 

“We have moved mountains in Europe,” said WEEE Forum director Pascal Leroy. “The challenge now is to transfer knowledge to other parts of the world.”

A so-called block or blocking pattern in the winter can bring stable, often wind-free weather accompanied by freezing temperatures

Europe faces a higher-than-usual chance of a cold blast of weather before the end of the year, but the winter overall is likely to be warmer than average, the continent’s long-range weather forecaster said Thursday.

Temperatures this winter will be crucial for homeowners worried about the record cost of heating their homes, and for European policymakers seeking to avoid energy rationing due to cuts in Russian gas supplies. 

“We see the winter as being warmer than usual,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service that produces seasonal forecasts for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

“Nevertheless there is a still a significant chance of a block situation, which can lead to cold temperatures and low wind over Europe,” he told AFP as the service issued a monthly update to its forecasts.

A so-called block or blocking pattern in the winter can bring stable, often wind-free weather accompanied by freezing temperatures.

“This was looking more likely in November, but there now looks like a pronounced probability of a cold outbreak in December,” Buontempo added.

The ECMWF produces weather modelling with data from a range of national weather services around Europe.

Its forecasts are based on indicators such as ocean and atmospheric temperatures, as well as wind speeds in the stratosphere, but do not have the accuracy of short-range reports.

The models provide the “best information possible, to give a hint, to guide our decisions”, Buontempo said. 

The European winter was expected to be warmer than usual because of the “La Nina” global weather phenomenon, which is related to cooling surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

“We know that in a La Nina year, the latter part of the European winter tends to favour westerly winds, so warm and wet,” Buontempo said.

The agency will update its winter season forecast next month when it will have greater confidence because “all the drivers for the winter will be more active”, he said.

Independent energy experts expect Europe to be able to withstand Russia’s gas cuts this winter, providing temperatures stay in line with or above the long-term average.

Governments have almost filled their strategic gas reserves and consumers are being urged to reduce their consumption.

The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based energy consultancy, believes temperatures over winter around 10 percent below the average would put strain on the European gas system.

It has also said a late cold spell, when gas stocks are expected to be low, could be the “Achilles heel of European gas supply security”.

A so-called block or blocking pattern in the winter can bring stable, often wind-free weather accompanied by freezing temperatures

Europe faces a higher-than-usual chance of a cold blast of weather before the end of the year, but the winter overall is likely to be warmer than average, the continent’s long-range weather forecaster said Thursday.

Temperatures this winter will be crucial for homeowners worried about the record cost of heating their homes, and for European policymakers seeking to avoid energy rationing due to cuts in Russian gas supplies. 

“We see the winter as being warmer than usual,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service that produces seasonal forecasts for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

“Nevertheless there is a still a significant chance of a block situation, which can lead to cold temperatures and low wind over Europe,” he told AFP as the service issued a monthly update to its forecasts.

A so-called block or blocking pattern in the winter can bring stable, often wind-free weather accompanied by freezing temperatures.

“This was looking more likely in November, but there now looks like a pronounced probability of a cold outbreak in December,” Buontempo said.

The ECMWF produces weather modelling with data from a range of national weather services around Europe.

Its forecasts are based on indicators such as ocean and atmospheric temperatures, as well as wind speeds in the stratosphere, but do not have the accuracy of short-range reports.

The models provide the “best information possible, to give a hint, to guide our decisions”, Buontempo said. 

The European winter was expected to be warmer than usual because of the “La Nina” global weather phenomenon, which is related to cooling surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

“We know that in a La Nina year, the latter part of the European winter tends to favour westerly winds, so warm and wet,” Buontempo said.

The agency will update its winter season forecast next month when it will have greater confidence because “all the drivers for the winter will be more active”, he said.

The report found that monitored animal populations had fallen 69 percent since 1970

Wild populations of monitored animal species have plummeted nearly 70 percent in the last 50 years, according to a landmark assessment released Thursday that highlights “devastating” losses to nature due to human activity.

Featuring data from 32,000 populations of more than 5,000 species of mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish, the WWF Living Planet Index shows accelerating falls across the globe.

In biodiversity-rich regions such as Latin America and the Caribbean, the figure for animal population loss is as high as 94 percent.

Globally, the report found that monitored animal populations had fallen 69 percent since 1970.

Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, said his organisation was “extremely worried” by the new data. 

“(It shows) a devastating fall in wildlife populations, in particular in tropical regions that are home to some of the most biodiverse landscapes in the world,” he said.

Mark Wright, director of science at WWF, said the figures were “truly frightening”, particularly for Latin America.

“Latin America is renowned for his biodiversity of course, it’s really important for lots of other things as well,” he said. 

“It’s super important for regulating the climate. We estimate currently there’s something like 150 to 200 billion tonnes of carbon wrapped up in the forests of the Amazon.”

That is equivalent to 550 to 740 billion tonnes of CO2, or 10 to 15 times more than annual greenhouse gas emissions at current rates.

The index found that freshwater species had declined more than those found in any other habitat, with an 83-percent population fall since 1970.

The report found that the main drivers of wildlife loss are habitat degradation due to development and farming, exploitation, the introduction of invasive species, pollution, climate change and disease. 

Lambertini said the world needed to rethink its harmful and wasteful agricultural practices before the global food chain collapsed.

“Food systems today are responsible for over 80 percent of deforestation on land, and if you look at the ocean and freshwater they are also driving a collapse of fishery stocks and populations in those habitats,” he said.

With world leaders due to convene in Montreal for the COP15 biodiversity summit in December, the report authors called for an international, binding commitment to protect nature, similar to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

– ‘Need to act now’ –

The Living Planet Report argues that increasing conservation and restoration efforts, producing and consuming food more sustainably, and rapidly and deeply decarbonising all sectors can alleviate the twin crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. 

It also calls for governments to properly factor into policymaking the value of services rendered by nature, such as food, medicine and water supply. 

“We need to stress the fact that nature loss is not just a moral issue of our duty to protect the rest of the world. It is actually an issue of material value, an issue of security for humanity as well,” said Lambertini.

Some areas experienced more population loss than others — Europe, for example, saw a wildlife population decline of 18 percent.

“But that also masks historic, very extreme losses of biodiversity,” said Andrew Terry, director of conservation at the Zoological Society of London, which helped compile the data. 

“We know that we’re coming out of (a) low point in the state of biodiversity in the northern hemisphere.”

In Africa, where 70 percent of livelihoods rely on nature in some form, the report showed a two-thirds fall in wildlife populations since 1970.

Alice Ruhweza, Africa regional director at WWF, said the assessment showed how there was a “huge human cost” when nature is lost.

She said young people in particular were concerned about wildlife preservation, and would push governments to implement greater protective measures. 

“We have a young, entrepreneurial and increasingly educated population that is showing more awareness around issues of nature,” said Ruhweza. 

“So the potential for transformative change is really significant. But the time is running short, and we need to act now.”

The brain of a rat in which a fluorescent protein has been used to highlight transplanted human brain cells

Scientists have successfully implanted and integrated human brain cells into newborn rats, creating a new way to study complex psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism, and perhaps eventually test treatments.

Studying how these conditions develop is incredibly difficult — animals do not experience them like people, and humans cannot simply be opened up for research.

Scientists can assemble small sections of human brain tissue made from stem cells in petri dishes, and have already done so with more than a dozen brain regions.

But in dishes, “neurons don’t grow to the size which a human neuron in an actual human brain would grow,” said Sergiu Pasca, the study’s lead author and professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University.

And isolated from a body, they cannot tell us what symptoms a defect will cause.

To overcome those limitations, researchers implanted the groupings of human brain cells, called organoids, into the brains of young rats.

The rats’ age was important: human neurons have been implanted into adult rats before, but an animal’s brain stops developing at a certain age, limiting how well implanted cells can integrate.

“By transplanting them at these early stages, we found that these organoids can grow relatively large, they become vascularised (receive nutrients) by the rat, and they can cover about a third of a rat’s (brain) hemisphere,” Pasca said.

– Blue light ‘reward’ –

To test how well the human neurons integrated with the rat brains and bodies, air was puffed across the animals’ whiskers, which prompted electrical activity in the human neurons.

That showed an input connection — external stimulation of the rat’s body was processed by the human tissue in the brain.

The scientists then tested the reverse: could the human neurons send signals back to the rat’s body?

They implanted human brain cells altered to respond to blue light, and then trained the rats to expect a “reward” of water from a spout when blue light shone on the neurons via a cable in the animals’ skulls.

After two weeks, pulsing the blue light sent the rats scrambling to the spout, according to the research published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The team has now used the technique to show that organoids developed from patients with Timothy syndrome grow more slowly and display less electrical activity than those from healthy people.

Tara Spires-Jones, a professor at the University of Edinburgh’s UK Dementia Research Institute, said the work “has the potential to advance what we know about human brain development and neurodevelopmental disorders”.

But she noted the human neurons “did not replicate all of the important features of the human developing brain” and more research is needed to ensure the technique is a “robust model”.

– Ethical debates –

Spires-Jones, who was not involved in the research, also pointed out potential ethical questions, “including whether these rats will have more human-like thinking and consciousness”.

Pasca said careful observations of the rats suggested the brain implants did not change them, or cause pain.

“There are no alterations to the rats’ behaviour or the rats’ well-being… there are no augmentations of functions,” he said.

He argued that limitations on how deeply human neurons integrate with the rat brain provide “natural barriers” that stop the animal from becoming too human.

Rat brains develop much faster than human ones, “so there’s only so much that the rat cortex can integrate,” he said.

But in species closer to humans, those barriers might no longer exist, and Pasca said he would not support using the technique in primates for now.

He believes though that there is a “moral imperative” to find ways to better study and treat psychiatric disorders.

“Certainly the more human these models are becoming, the more uncomfortable we feel,” he said.

But “human psychiatric disorders are to a large extent uniquely human. So we’re going to have to think very carefully… how far we want to go with some of these models moving forward.”

Drivers cross the Numan bridge in search of safer ground away from rising waters in Numan Community, Adamawa state in northeastern Nigeria

About 500 people have died in Nigeria’s worst floods in a decade and 1.4 million others been displaced from their homes since the start of the rainy season, the government said.

Floods caused by abundant rains and poor infrastructure have affected vast swathes of Africa’s most populous country sparking fears they could worsen food insecurity and inflation. 

Nigeria’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs said Tuesday that “over 1.4 million persons were displaced, about 500 persons have been reported dead… and 1,546 persons were injured”.

“Similarly, 45,249 houses were totally damaged… while 70,566 hectares of farmlands were completely destroyed,” added the statement from the ministry’s Deputy Director Information, Rhoda Ishaku Iliya.

National Emergency Management Agency spokesman Manzo Ezekiel told AFP on Wednesday the latest figures were from last weekend.

While the rainy season usually begins around June, most deaths and displacements started “around August and September” Ezekiel added.

“We are taking all the necessary actions to bring relief to the people affected by the flood,” humanitarian affairs ministry official Nasir Sani-Gwarzo said.

Fuel scarcity caused long queues at petrol stations in the capital Abuja this week after tankers were blocked by floods in neighbouring states.

In southern Anambra state, 76 people died when a boat capsized  last Friday during flooding of the Niger River.

More abundant rains are expected in the coming weeks and months — the rainy season typically ends in November in northern states and in  December in the south. 

Until Thursday, “heavy rainfall is anticipated over parts of Taraba, Ebonyi, Benue and Cross Rivers State,” the  Meteorological Agency said on Facebook, adding that “flash flooding is likely”.

Floods were also caused by the release of water from several damns, a process that was meant to prevent excessive flooding.

The high level of damage caused is also because “people violate regional planning (rules), constructing (houses and buildings) near waterways,” said Ezekiel.

In 2012, 363 people died and more than 2.1 million were displaced from flooding. 

Sub-Saharan Africa is disproportionately affected by climate change and many of its economies are already struggling from ripple effects of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Rice producers have warned that the devastating floods could impact prices in the country of some 200 million people where rice imports are banned to stimulate local production.

The World Food Programme and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said last month that Nigeria was among six countries facing a high risk of catastrophic levels of hunger.

Drivers cross the Numan bridge in search of safer ground away from rising waters in Numan Community, Adamawa state in northeastern Nigeria

About 500 people have died in Nigeria’s worst floods in a decade and 1.4 million others been displaced from their homes since the start of the rainy season, the government said.

Floods caused by abundant rains and poor infrastructure have affected vast swathes of Africa’s most populous country sparking fears they could worsen food insecurity and inflation. 

Nigeria’s Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs said Tuesday that “over 1.4 million persons were displaced, about 500 persons have been reported dead… and 1,546 persons were injured”.

“Similarly, 45,249 houses were totally damaged… while 70,566 hectares of farmlands were completely destroyed,” added the statement from the ministry’s Deputy Director Information, Rhoda Ishaku Iliya.

National Emergency Management Agency spokesman Manzo Ezekiel told AFP on Wednesday the latest figures were from last weekend.

While the rainy season usually begins around June, most deaths and displacements started “around August and September” Ezekiel added.

“We are taking all the necessary actions to bring relief to the people affected by the flood,” humanitarian affairs ministry official Nasir Sani-Gwarzo said.

Fuel scarcity caused long queues at petrol stations in the capital Abuja this week after tankers were blocked by floods in neighbouring states.

In southern Anambra state, 76 people died when a boat capsized  last Friday during flooding of the Niger River.

More abundant rains are expected in the coming weeks and months — the rainy season typically ends in November in northern states and in  December in the south. 

Until Thursday, “heavy rainfall is anticipated over parts of Taraba, Ebonyi, Benue and Cross Rivers State,” the  Meteorological Agency said on Facebook, adding that “flash flooding is likely”.

Floods were also caused by the release of water from several damns, a process that was meant to prevent excessive flooding.

The high level of damage caused is also because “people violate regional planning (rules), constructing (houses and buildings) near waterways,” said Ezekiel.

In 2012, 363 people died and more than 2.1 million were displaced from flooding. 

Sub-Saharan Africa is disproportionately affected by climate change and many of its economies are already struggling from ripple effects of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Rice producers have warned that the devastating floods could impact prices in the country of some 200 million people where rice imports are banned to stimulate local production.

The World Food Programme and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said last month that Nigeria was among six countries facing a high risk of catastrophic levels of hunger.